Variables

A variable is a name that points to some data.
- Variable names can contain lower- or upper-case letters, numbers, and the _ symbol.
- Names must start with letters and (when possible) should be descriptive
Variables are given values by assignment using either the = or <- symbol

Recommendations

Use descriptive variable names instead of comments.
Avoid 1- and 2- letter names.
Separate words with underscores.
Use a consistent assignment operator (= or <-, not both)

# Comments in R start with the # symbol
# anything after # will not be executed
# Comments are a useful way to annotate your code so you know what is 
# happening

# Legal variable names
x = 1
y0 = 5
time_of_day = "20:15"
dayOfWeek <- "Monday"

# bad!
# d is the diversity in our site, in species
d = 8

# better!
site_diversity = 8


# error
0y = 5
todays date = "February 21"
## Error: <text>:21:2: unexpected symbol
## 20: # error
## 21: 0y
##      ^

Data types

numeric: integers and floating-point (decimal) numbers
logical: yes/no, true/false data; in R represented by the special values TRUE and FALSE
- T and F (no quotes) can be used as shortcuts for TRUE/FALSE, but you should avoid this!
character: strings, text
factor: special variable type for categorical (nominal & ordinal) data

Numeric operators

We use operators to perform computations on variables and constants
The assignment operators give a value to a variable
- =, <-
- Both work mostly the same, use alt dash (-) for <-
Mathematical operators allow us to do arithmetic
- +, -, *, /, ^

# assignment
x = 5
# equivalent
x <- 5

# class tells you the data type of a variable
class(x)
## [1] "numeric"

# math
x + 2
## [1] 7
(3 + x) * 2
## [1] 16
3^2
## [1] 9

Functions

Functions take arguments (which can be variables or constants).
The function performs computations on the arguments.
Functions can return a result, have side-effects, or both.

Mathematical & functions

sin(), cos()
log(), exp(), sqrt()

Get help on a function with ? or help(), for example: ?log or help(log). If you don´t know a function’s name, you can search for a (likely/suspected) string in its name with ??.

x = 5

# The print() function takes one or more arguments
#      in this case the variable x
# It returns no value, but has the side effect of printing the 
# value of x to the screen
print(x)
## [1] 5

# compute the natural logarithm of x
# then store it in y, then print the result
y = log(x)
print(y)
## [1] 1.609438

# functions can take multiple arguments, and arguments can be named
# here we change the base of the logarithm
log(x, base = 10)
## [1] 0.69897
# equivalents, found in the help file with ?log
#     log(x, 10)
#     log10(x)

Data structures: vectors

A data structure is a way of organizing multiple pieces of data into a single variable
A vector holds one or more values of a single data type

Creating vectors

c() is a simple function that concatenates its arguments into a vector
The : operator creates a sequence of integers, counting by ones
More general sequences use the seq function
- Third argument tells you what to count by
Repeat values with rep

# The c() function stands for concatenate
# it groups items together into a vector
(five_numbers = c(3, 2, 8.6, 4, 9.75))
## [1] 3.00 2.00 8.60 4.00 9.75

# Creating vectors
(one_to_ten = 1:10)
##  [1]  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10
class(one_to_ten)
## [1] "integer"
# integers are *also* numeric
is(one_to_ten, "numeric")
## [1] TRUE

## sequences and repeats
seq(1, 5, 0.4)
##  [1] 1.0 1.4 1.8 2.2 2.6 3.0 3.4 3.8 4.2 4.6 5.0
rep(0, 3)
## [1] 0 0 0

Vectorized operations

Many of R’s basic operators and functions are vectorized: they apply one-at-a-time to the whole vector.
Vectors can be other data types, and can be converted between data types.


# math on vectors is performed on each element
five_numbers + 1
## [1]  4.00  3.00  9.60  5.00 10.75
five_numbers^2
## [1]  9.0000  4.0000 73.9600 16.0000 95.0625

sin(five_numbers)
## [1]  0.1411200  0.9092974  0.7343971 -0.7568025 -0.3195192

# vectors of other data types
class(five_numbers)
## [1] "numeric"
(five_letters = c("c", "b", "z", "q", "w"))
## [1] "c" "b" "z" "q" "w"
class(five_letters)
## [1] "character"
sort(five_letters)
## [1] "b" "c" "q" "w" "z"

as(five_numbers, "integer")
## [1] 3 2 8 4 9

Vectors: indexing

We can use indexing to get a part of a vector by its position
- use the [] operator
- an index can be multiple values!
- any legal expression that returns integers can be used inside []!
In R, the first index is always 1
Asking for an index outside the allowable range is an error

five_numbers
## [1] 3.00 2.00 8.60 4.00 9.75
five_numbers[1]
## [1] 3
five_numbers[3:5]
## [1] 8.60 4.00 9.75
five_numbers[c(1,4)]
## [1] 3 4

# get vector length
length(five_numbers)
## [1] 5
five_numbers[10]
## [1] NA

# can index with another variable
(i = length(five_numbers))
## [1] 5
five_numbers[i]
## [1] 9.75

# also an expression
five_numbers[i - 1]
## [1] 4

More basic functions

Basic statistical functions have mostly obvious names
Mathematical functions will operate separately on each vector element

mean(five_numbers)
## [1] 5.47
median(five_numbers)
## [1] 4
sd(five_numbers)
## [1] 3.479152
var(five_numbers)
## [1] 12.1045
sum(five_numbers)
## [1] 27.35

# mathematical functions
exp(five_numbers)
## [1]    20.085537     7.389056  5431.659591    54.598150 17154.228809
log(five_numbers)
## [1] 1.0986123 0.6931472 2.1517622 1.3862944 2.2772673

More programming: logic and comparison

The logical data type indicates yes/no, true/false data
Represented by the special values TRUE and FALSE (no quotes)
We can use comparison operators to compare values and produce logical results
- ==, !=, <, >, <=, >=

# less than, greater than, less/greater or equals
1 < 2
## [1] TRUE
class(1 < 2)
## [1] "logical"

2 <= 2
## [1] TRUE
2 > 4
## [1] FALSE
'q' >= 'm'
## [1] TRUE

# equality testing
2 == 1 + 1
## [1] TRUE
2 != 'q'
## [1] TRUE

# be careful with decimals!
0.2 + 0.1 == 0.3
## [1] FALSE
# preferred:
all.equal(0.1 + 0.2, 0.3)
## [1] TRUE

Logical operators

We can combine logical expressions with the logical operators
- & (and), | (or; the vertical bar), ! (not).

# and: both must be true
TRUE & TRUE
## [1] TRUE
TRUE & FALSE
## [1] FALSE
FALSE & FALSE
## [1] FALSE

# or: only one needs to be true
TRUE | FALSE
## [1] TRUE
FALSE | FALSE
## [1] FALSE

# not: returns the opposite
!FALSE
## [1] TRUE

# both statements are TRUE, so this is TRUE
1 + 1 == 2 & 2 < 4
## [1] TRUE

Reading in real data

Download the Palmer penguins dataset

Save this in your project folder, inside another folder named data

Artwork by @allison_horst

Reading in real data

The read.csv function takes a file path or URL as the argument
Returns a tabular data structure called a data.frame
"data/penguins.csv" is a relative path.
- R will search inside the working directory for a folder named "data".
An absolute path gives the location on your computer, starting from the very top. Example:

"/Users/ltalluto/Desktop/intro_r/data/penguins.csv"

Recommendation: use relative paths!

Hint: use .. to refer to one directory above the current (working) directory

penguins = read.csv("data/penguins.csv")
# read.csv also takes URLs!
# penguins = read.csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/allisonhorst/palmerpenguins/main/inst/extdata/penguins.csv")
class(penguins)
## [1] "data.frame"

Data prep recommendations

Prepare data in excel
The first row is a header with column names
Choose good column names (no spaces or special characters, include units)
In a separate file, describe the dataset, how it was collected, and the meaning of each column
Arrange your data so that each row is a single observation, each column is a variable (“tidy” data)

species	island	bill_length_mm	bill_depth_mm	flipper_length_mm	body_mass_g	sex	year
Adelie	Torgersen	39.1	18.7	181	3750	male	2007
Adelie	Torgersen	39.5	17.4	186	3800	female	2007
Adelie	Torgersen	40.3	18.0	195	3250	female	2007
Adelie	Torgersen	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	2007
Adelie	Torgersen	36.7	19.3	193	3450	female	2007
Adelie	Torgersen	39.3	20.6	190	3650	male	2007

Working with data frames

A data.frame holds tabular data
- Each row of a data frame is a single case (i.e., an observation)
- Each column of a data frame is a single variable (i.e., a vector, all the same data type)
head shows the first few rows of a data frame

# Load a dataset named 'penguins' and convert it to a data frame
# this dataset comes from a package, "palmerpenguins"
data(penguins, package = "palmerpenguins")
penguins = as.data.frame(penguins)
head(penguins)

species	island	bill_length_mm	bill_depth_mm	flipper_length_mm	body_mass_g	sex	year
Adelie	Torgersen	39.1	18.7	181	3750	male	2007
Adelie	Torgersen	39.5	17.4	186	3800	female	2007
Adelie	Torgersen	40.3	18.0	195	3250	female	2007
Adelie	Torgersen	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	2007
Adelie	Torgersen	36.7	19.3	193	3450	female	2007
Adelie	Torgersen	39.3	20.6	190	3650	male	2007

Working with data frames

View shows the data frame in a graphical window (Or double-click the dataset in the Environment tab)
str gives you a summary of the structure of the data

str(penguins)
## 'data.frame':    344 obs. of  8 variables:
##  $ species          : Factor w/ 3 levels "Adelie","Chinstrap",..: 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
##  $ island           : Factor w/ 3 levels "Biscoe","Dream",..: 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 ...
##  $ bill_length_mm   : num  39.1 39.5 40.3 NA 36.7 39.3 38.9 39.2 34.1 42 ...
##  $ bill_depth_mm    : num  18.7 17.4 18 NA 19.3 20.6 17.8 19.6 18.1 20.2 ...
##  $ flipper_length_mm: int  181 186 195 NA 193 190 181 195 193 190 ...
##  $ body_mass_g      : int  3750 3800 3250 NA 3450 3650 3625 4675 3475 4250 ...
##  $ sex              : Factor w/ 2 levels "female","male": 2 1 1 NA 1 2 1 2 NA NA ...
##  $ year             : int  2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 2007 ...

nrow, ncol, dim give you dimensions of the data frame

# data frame dimensions
nrow(penguins)
## [1] 344
ncol(penguins)
## [1] 8
dim(penguins)
## [1] 344   8

Working with data frames

Variable names are not visible in the global environment!
You must access them using $ or [], lets you ‘peek’ inside the data.frame and access variables there.


# Error: there is no variable with that name!
bill_length_mm
## Error in eval(expr, envir, enclos): object 'bill_length_mm' not found


# accessing a variable by name
penguins$bill_length_mm
penguins[, 'bill_length_mm']

# equivalent: accessing a variable by position
penguins[,3] # get every row in the third column
##   [1] 39.1 39.5 40.3   NA 36.7 39.3 38.9 39.2 34.1 42.0 37.8 37.8 41.1 38.6 34.6
##  [16] 36.6 38.7 42.5 34.4 46.0 37.8 37.7 35.9 38.2 38.8 35.3 40.6 40.5 37.9 40.5
##  [31] 39.5 37.2 39.5 40.9 36.4 39.2 38.8 42.2 37.6 39.8 36.5 40.8 36.0 44.1 37.0
##  [46] 39.6 41.1 37.5 36.0 42.3 39.6 40.1 35.0 42.0 34.5 41.4 39.0 40.6 36.5 37.6
##  [61] 35.7 41.3 37.6 41.1 36.4 41.6 35.5 41.1 35.9 41.8 33.5 39.7 39.6 45.8 35.5
##  [76] 42.8 40.9 37.2 36.2 42.1 34.6 42.9 36.7 35.1 37.3 41.3 36.3 36.9 38.3 38.9
##  [91] 35.7 41.1 34.0 39.6 36.2 40.8 38.1 40.3 33.1 43.2 35.0 41.0 37.7 37.8 37.9
## [106] 39.7 38.6 38.2 38.1 43.2 38.1 45.6 39.7 42.2 39.6 42.7 38.6 37.3 35.7 41.1
## [121] 36.2 37.7 40.2 41.4 35.2 40.6 38.8 41.5 39.0 44.1 38.5 43.1 36.8 37.5 38.1
## [136] 41.1 35.6 40.2 37.0 39.7 40.2 40.6 32.1 40.7 37.3 39.0 39.2 36.6 36.0 37.8
## [151] 36.0 41.5 46.1 50.0 48.7 50.0 47.6 46.5 45.4 46.7 43.3 46.8 40.9 49.0 45.5
## [166] 48.4 45.8 49.3 42.0 49.2 46.2 48.7 50.2 45.1 46.5 46.3 42.9 46.1 44.5 47.8
## [181] 48.2 50.0 47.3 42.8 45.1 59.6 49.1 48.4 42.6 44.4 44.0 48.7 42.7 49.6 45.3
## [196] 49.6 50.5 43.6 45.5 50.5 44.9 45.2 46.6 48.5 45.1 50.1 46.5 45.0 43.8 45.5
## [211] 43.2 50.4 45.3 46.2 45.7 54.3 45.8 49.8 46.2 49.5 43.5 50.7 47.7 46.4 48.2
## [226] 46.5 46.4 48.6 47.5 51.1 45.2 45.2 49.1 52.5 47.4 50.0 44.9 50.8 43.4 51.3
## [241] 47.5 52.1 47.5 52.2 45.5 49.5 44.5 50.8 49.4 46.9 48.4 51.1 48.5 55.9 47.2
## [256] 49.1 47.3 46.8 41.7 53.4 43.3 48.1 50.5 49.8 43.5 51.5 46.2 55.1 44.5 48.8
## [271] 47.2   NA 46.8 50.4 45.2 49.9 46.5 50.0 51.3 45.4 52.7 45.2 46.1 51.3 46.0
## [286] 51.3 46.6 51.7 47.0 52.0 45.9 50.5 50.3 58.0 46.4 49.2 42.4 48.5 43.2 50.6
## [301] 46.7 52.0 50.5 49.5 46.4 52.8 40.9 54.2 42.5 51.0 49.7 47.5 47.6 52.0 46.9
## [316] 53.5 49.0 46.2 50.9 45.5 50.9 50.8 50.1 49.0 51.5 49.8 48.1 51.4 45.7 50.7
## [331] 42.5 52.2 45.2 49.3 50.2 45.6 51.9 46.8 45.7 55.8 43.5 49.6 50.8 50.2

Working with data frames

Variable names are not visible in the global environment!
You must access them using $ or [], lets you ‘peek’ inside the data.frame and access variables there.

# accessing a variable by name, and subsetting rows
penguins[1:10,"bill_length_mm"]
##  [1] 39.1 39.5 40.3   NA 36.7 39.3 38.9 39.2 34.1 42.0

Subsetting data frames

More complex indexing is available with []

# Get the first value in the third column
penguins[1,3]
## [1] 39.1

# Get the whole third column, then use head to print the first six values
head(penguins[,3])
## [1] 39.1 39.5 40.3   NA 36.7 39.3

# First five values of columns 3 and 4
penguins[1:5, c(3,4)]
##   bill_length_mm bill_depth_mm
## 1           39.1          18.7
## 2           39.5          17.4
## 3           40.3          18.0
## 4             NA            NA
## 5           36.7          19.3

# Can also index by name
penguins[1:5, c("bill_length_mm", "bill_depth_mm")]
##   bill_length_mm bill_depth_mm
## 1           39.1          18.7
## 2           39.5          17.4
## 3           40.3          18.0
## 4             NA            NA
## 5           36.7          19.3

# Remove the first 300 rows
penguins[-(1:300),]
##       species island bill_length_mm bill_depth_mm flipper_length_mm body_mass_g
## 301 Chinstrap  Dream           46.7          17.9               195        3300
## 302 Chinstrap  Dream           52.0          19.0               197        4150
## 303 Chinstrap  Dream           50.5          18.4               200        3400
## 304 Chinstrap  Dream           49.5          19.0               200        3800
## 305 Chinstrap  Dream           46.4          17.8               191        3700
## 306 Chinstrap  Dream           52.8          20.0               205        4550
## 307 Chinstrap  Dream           40.9          16.6               187        3200
## 308 Chinstrap  Dream           54.2          20.8               201        4300
## 309 Chinstrap  Dream           42.5          16.7               187        3350
## 310 Chinstrap  Dream           51.0          18.8               203        4100
## 311 Chinstrap  Dream           49.7          18.6               195        3600
## 312 Chinstrap  Dream           47.5          16.8               199        3900
## 313 Chinstrap  Dream           47.6          18.3               195        3850
## 314 Chinstrap  Dream           52.0          20.7               210        4800
## 315 Chinstrap  Dream           46.9          16.6               192        2700
## 316 Chinstrap  Dream           53.5          19.9               205        4500
## 317 Chinstrap  Dream           49.0          19.5               210        3950
## 318 Chinstrap  Dream           46.2          17.5               187        3650
## 319 Chinstrap  Dream           50.9          19.1               196        3550
## 320 Chinstrap  Dream           45.5          17.0               196        3500
## 321 Chinstrap  Dream           50.9          17.9               196        3675
## 322 Chinstrap  Dream           50.8          18.5               201        4450
## 323 Chinstrap  Dream           50.1          17.9               190        3400
## 324 Chinstrap  Dream           49.0          19.6               212        4300
## 325 Chinstrap  Dream           51.5          18.7               187        3250
## 326 Chinstrap  Dream           49.8          17.3               198        3675
## 327 Chinstrap  Dream           48.1          16.4               199        3325
## 328 Chinstrap  Dream           51.4          19.0               201        3950
## 329 Chinstrap  Dream           45.7          17.3               193        3600
## 330 Chinstrap  Dream           50.7          19.7               203        4050
## 331 Chinstrap  Dream           42.5          17.3               187        3350
## 332 Chinstrap  Dream           52.2          18.8               197        3450
## 333 Chinstrap  Dream           45.2          16.6               191        3250
## 334 Chinstrap  Dream           49.3          19.9               203        4050
## 335 Chinstrap  Dream           50.2          18.8               202        3800
## 336 Chinstrap  Dream           45.6          19.4               194        3525
## 337 Chinstrap  Dream           51.9          19.5               206        3950
## 338 Chinstrap  Dream           46.8          16.5               189        3650
## 339 Chinstrap  Dream           45.7          17.0               195        3650
## 340 Chinstrap  Dream           55.8          19.8               207        4000
## 341 Chinstrap  Dream           43.5          18.1               202        3400
## 342 Chinstrap  Dream           49.6          18.2               193        3775
## 343 Chinstrap  Dream           50.8          19.0               210        4100
## 344 Chinstrap  Dream           50.2          18.7               198        3775
##        sex year
## 301 female 2007
## 302   male 2007
## 303 female 2008
## 304   male 2008
## 305 female 2008
## 306   male 2008
## 307 female 2008
## 308   male 2008
## 309 female 2008
## 310   male 2008
## 311   male 2008
## 312 female 2008
## 313 female 2008
## 314   male 2008
## 315 female 2008
## 316   male 2008
## 317   male 2008
## 318 female 2008
## 319   male 2008
## 320 female 2008
## 321 female 2009
## 322   male 2009
## 323 female 2009
## 324   male 2009
## 325   male 2009
## 326 female 2009
## 327 female 2009
## 328   male 2009
## 329 female 2009
## 330   male 2009
## 331 female 2009
## 332   male 2009
## 333 female 2009
## 334   male 2009
## 335   male 2009
## 336 female 2009
## 337   male 2009
## 338 female 2009
## 339 female 2009
## 340   male 2009
## 341 female 2009
## 342   male 2009
## 343   male 2009
## 344 female 2009

Logical subsets

We can take a part of a data.frame or vector based on some condition
Easy to use, easy to read: Use the subset function

# Return a data frame with only one species
penguins_adelie = subset(penguins, species == "Adelie")
head(penguins_adelie)
##   species    island bill_length_mm bill_depth_mm flipper_length_mm body_mass_g
## 1  Adelie Torgersen           39.1          18.7               181        3750
## 2  Adelie Torgersen           39.5          17.4               186        3800
## 3  Adelie Torgersen           40.3          18.0               195        3250
## 4  Adelie Torgersen             NA            NA                NA          NA
## 5  Adelie Torgersen           36.7          19.3               193        3450
## 6  Adelie Torgersen           39.3          20.6               190        3650
##      sex year
## 1   male 2007
## 2 female 2007
## 3 female 2007
## 4   <NA> 2007
## 5 female 2007
## 6   male 2007

Logical subsets

We can take a part of a data.frame or vector based on some condition
Easy to use, easy to read: Use the subset function
Select from multiple categories with the %in% operator

# Try these, what do they do?
subset(penguins, species == "Adelie" & sex == "Male" & year != 2007)

subset(penguins, species %in% c("Chinstrap", "Gentoo"))

Logical subsets

We can take a part of a data.frame or vector based on some condition
Easy to use, easy to read: Use the subset function
Select from multiple categories with the %in% operator
Hard, but more flexible: use logical indices in []

# get the body mass of all female penguins with a larger-than-average bill length
penguins[penguins$sex == "female" & penguins$bill_length_mm > mean(penguins$bill_length_mm, na.rm = TRUE), "body_mass_g"]
##  [1]   NA 4500 4450 4550 4800 4650 4200 4800 5000 4400   NA 4600 5050 5150 4350
## [16] 4300 4200 5100 4850 4400 4900 4200 4400 4700   NA 4750 5200 4700 4600 4750
## [31] 4625 4725 4750 4875 4950 4750 4850 4875 4625 4850 4975   NA 5000 4375   NA
## [46] 4925   NA 4850 5200 3500 3525 3950 3250 4150 3800 3700 3575 3700 3450 3300
## [61] 3400 3700 3900 3850 2700 3650 3500 3675 3400 3675 3325 3600 3250 3525 3650
## [76] 3650 3775

Practise with data frames

Read in the penguin data using read.csv. Store it in a variable named penguins. Then try to do the following.

How many rows and columns are in the dataset? Use dim, nrow, and ncol.
What is the output of mean(penguins$bill_depth_mm)? Why? What if you try mean(penguins$bill_depth_mm, na.rm = TRUE)? Check the help file by typing ?mean. Does the same logic work for sd?
How many penguins were captured in each year? Try the table function.
You can use table with multiple columns of data. Try to find out how many of each species were captured in each year.
- Hint: use c() inside [] to get multiple columns. See the previous slide.
Add a new column called body_mass_kg, and compute the body mass, in kg instead of g.
- Hint: you can use $ to create a new column by name
Use subset to compute the mean bill length and bill depth for Gentoo penguins

Practise with data frames

## 1.
# dim gives rows and columns, in that order
nrow(penguins)
## [1] 344
ncol(penguins)
## [1] 8
dim(penguins)
## [1] 344   8

## 2.
# there are missing values, so this doesn't work
mean(penguins$bill_depth_mm)
## [1] NA
# adding na.rm = TRUE gives us what we expect
mean(penguins$bill_depth_mm, na.rm = TRUE)
## [1] 17.15117
sd(penguins$bill_depth_mm, na.rm = TRUE)
## [1] 1.974793

## 3.
table(penguins$year)
## 
## 2007 2008 2009 
##  110  114  120

## 4. 
table(penguins[, c('species', 'year')])
##            year
## species     2007 2008 2009
##   Adelie      50   50   52
##   Chinstrap   26   18   24
##   Gentoo      34   46   44

## 5.
# nothing is printed! but the new column is created with the data already stored
# can confirm by looking at the data frame with head
penguins$body_mass_kg = penguins$body_mass_g / 1000
head(penguins)
##   species    island bill_length_mm bill_depth_mm flipper_length_mm body_mass_g
## 1  Adelie Torgersen           39.1          18.7               181        3750
## 2  Adelie Torgersen           39.5          17.4               186        3800
## 3  Adelie Torgersen           40.3          18.0               195        3250
## 4  Adelie Torgersen             NA            NA                NA          NA
## 5  Adelie Torgersen           36.7          19.3               193        3450
## 6  Adelie Torgersen           39.3          20.6               190        3650
##      sex year body_mass_kg
## 1   male 2007         3.75
## 2 female 2007         3.80
## 3 female 2007         3.25
## 4   <NA> 2007           NA
## 5 female 2007         3.45
## 6   male 2007         3.65


## 6.
penguins_gentoo = subset(penguins, species == "Gentoo")
mean(penguins_gentoo$bill_length_mm, na.rm = TRUE)
## [1] 47.50488
mean(penguins_gentoo$bill_depth_mm, na.rm = TRUE)
## [1] 14.98211

Cleaning up the penguin data

Our data frame has some missing data. Let’s remove the incomplete cases using the complete.cases function.

# Try this: what is the output?
complete.cases(penguins)

# what is this doing? why does this work?
sum(! complete.cases(penguins))
## [1] 11

# Again, break this down one piece at a time
# start inside the brackets and work out
penguins = penguins[complete.cases(penguins), ]

Getting summary statistics

We have learned some basic functions for summary statistics
- mean, sd, var
- quantile, range, sum
- complete.cases
But our data has multiple partitions!
- species, sex, year, island
- What if we want to summarise across these partitions?

Getting summary statistics

table allows us to count cases across partitions
tapply (apply a function in a table) is a generalisation of table, allows us to compute any statistic across partitions
- syntax: first the variable, then the partition, then the statistical function, then additional arguments

# one variable, one partition
tapply(penguins$bill_length_mm, penguins$species, mean, na.rm = TRUE)
##    Adelie Chinstrap    Gentoo 
##  38.82397  48.83382  47.56807

# one variable, two partitions
tapply(penguins$bill_length_mm, penguins[, c('species', 'sex')], 
       mean, na.rm = TRUE)
##            sex
## species       female     male
##   Adelie    37.25753 40.39041
##   Chinstrap 46.57353 51.09412
##   Gentoo    45.56379 49.47377

Getting summary statistics

table allows us to count cases across partitions
tapply (apply a function in a table) is a generalisation of table, allows us to compute any statistic across partitions
- syntax: first the variable, then the partition, then the statistical function, then additional arguments
sapply (simple apply) applies a function to multiple variables but with no partitions
- first the variables, then the function

# compute the sd of every variable
pvars = penguins[, c('bill_length_mm', 'bill_depth_mm', 
                     'flipper_length_mm', 'body_mass_g')]
sapply(pvars, sd)
##    bill_length_mm     bill_depth_mm flipper_length_mm       body_mass_g 
##          5.468668          1.969235         14.015765        805.215802

Summary statistics: practise

Subset the data to look only at Adelie penguins.
Does the distribution of flipper length of Adelie penguins vary among the different islands? Make sure you account for sex. Check the mean, sd, median, min, and max.
Try making a box and whisker plot using the boxplot function. Try the following syntax: boxplot(y ~ group1 + group2, data = penguins).
- For y, substitute the name of the variable inside penguins that you want to plot (e.g., flipper_length_mm).
- For group1 and group2, substitite the names of any grouping variables you want to use, like sex.
Customize your plot. Check the help file for boxplot and try changing some of the defaults to improve the appearance of your plot. Some example argu,ments you could change:
- xlab and ylab, the axis titles
- border, col, the colors of the box borders and the fill color
- notch, boxwex (see if you can figure them out from the help file, or by experimenting)

Summary statistics: practise

# Subset the data to look only at Adelie penguins.
penguins_adelie = subset(penguins, species == "Adelie")

# Does the distribution of flipper length of Adelie penguins vary
# among the different islands?
# we can use tapply with the different functions

## mean
tapply(penguins_adelie$flipper_length_mm, 
       penguins_adelie[, c('island', 'sex')], mean)
##            sex
## island        female     male
##   Biscoe    187.1818 190.4091
##   Dream     187.8519 191.9286
##   Torgersen 188.2917 194.9130

## sd
tapply(penguins_adelie$flipper_length_mm, 
       penguins_adelie[, c('island', 'sex')], sd)
##            sex
## island        female     male
##   Biscoe    6.744567 6.463517
##   Dream     5.510156 6.803749
##   Torgersen 4.638958 5.915412

## median
tapply(penguins_adelie$flipper_length_mm, 
       penguins_adelie[, c('island', 'sex')], median)
##            sex
## island      female  male
##   Biscoe       187 191.0
##   Dream        188 190.5
##   Torgersen    189 195.0

## min
tapply(penguins_adelie$flipper_length_mm, 
       penguins_adelie[, c('island', 'sex')], min)
##            sex
## island      female male
##   Biscoe       172  180
##   Dream        178  178
##   Torgersen    176  181

## max
tapply(penguins_adelie$flipper_length_mm, 
       penguins_adelie[, c('island', 'sex')], max)
##            sex
## island      female male
##   Biscoe       199  203
##   Dream        202  208
##   Torgersen    196  210

Summary statistics: practise

# a boxplot is a much nicer way to visualise this
boxplot(flipper_length_mm ~ island+sex, data = penguins_adelie)

Summary statistics: practise

# a boxplot is a much nicer way to visualise this
# the defaults are quite ugly, let's improve things
# I chose colours using colorbrewer
# https://colorbrewer2.org/#type=qualitative&scheme=Paired&n=7
# 3 colors, one for each island
cols = c("#a6cee3", "#fb9a99", "#fdbf6f")
boxplot(flipper_length_mm ~ island+sex, data = penguins_adelie, 
        at = c(1.6,2,2.4,    3.6,4,4.4), # at controls x-location, allows grouping by sex
        col = rep(cols, 2), # set the colours, repeated twice (female and male)
        names = c("", "Female", "", "", "Male", ""), # labels under the boxes
        xlab = "", ylab = "Flipper length (mm)", # set axis titles
        bty = 'n', #disable the box around the plot
        notch = TRUE,
        boxwex = 0.3 # thinner boxes
)
# add a legend to the plot
legend("topleft", legend = unique(penguins_adelie$island), 
       title = "Island", fill = cols, bty = 'n')

Graphics in R

R currently has two dominant graphical engines

Base graphics

Built in to R.
Simple to use
Relatively easy syntax
Plots usually need a lot of customization before they are finished

ggplot2

A package you must install.
More complex syntax
Produces publication-quality graphics with less customization needed.
Plots can be saved in a variable, with customization added as needed.

Histograms: show the distribution of a single variable

hist(penguins$bill_depth_mm)

## do this once!
# install.packages("ggplot2")

## Once per session
library("ggplot2")

ggplot(penguins, aes(x = bill_depth_mm)) + geom_histogram()
## `stat_bin()` using `bins = 30`. Pick better value with `binwidth`.

Histograms: show the distribution of a single variable

Defaults are not amazing, some improvements needed

main = "" disables the title
xlab and ylab control axis labels
breaks controls the number of bins in the histogram
col sets the color of the bars
border sets the color of the borders (NA: no border)

hist(penguins$bill_depth_mm, main = "", xlab="Bill depth (mm)", 
     ylab = "Frequency", breaks = 20, col="#999999", border=NA)

Histograms: show the distribution of a single variable

ggplot(penguins, aes(x = bill_depth_mm)) + 
    geom_histogram(bins = 20) + 
    theme_minimal() + xlab("Bill depth (mm)")

Colours

R supports colours using the common HTML color coding: #RRGGBB
- RR, GG, BB are the amounts of red, green, and blue
- each ranges from 00 (none) to FF (most)
- Colour pickers online help you translate a color in real life to a coded color
Best practise: choose colours using reputable packages based in colour theory
- Continuous data: scico and viridis are the best.
- Categorical data: rcolorbrewer is simple, limited palettes, iWantHue generates custom categorical palettes
R also has 657 named colours: col = 'rosybrown'
see the colors() function for the names
You can use the scales package to generate custom palettes.

head(colors())
## [1] "white"         "aliceblue"     "antiquewhite"  "antiquewhite1"
## [5] "antiquewhite2" "antiquewhite3"

Basic statistics: comparing means

Hypothesis: in Gentoo penguins, males are heavier than females
We can formally test this using t.test

penguins_gentoo = subset(penguins, species == "Gentoo")
tapply(penguins_gentoo$body_mass_g, penguins_gentoo$sex, mean)
##   female     male 
## 4679.741 5484.836

Comparing means: more than 2 groups

We can use the function aov to do an analysis of variance when there are more than 2 groups or when there are more than two factors.
Hypothesis 1: Average body mass varies by species
Hypothesis 2: Average body mass varies by both species and sex

Exercise: comparing means

Hypothesis 1: in Gentoo penguins, males are heavier than females

Try to visualise the distribution of body masses in males and females using histograms. Does it look like there is a difference?
Use t.test to test the hypothesis. Check the help file to get started.

Hypotheses 2 & 3

Hypothesis 2: Average body mass varies by species
Hypothesis 3: Average body mass varies by both species and sex

Create a boxplot (or try a violin plot using geom_violin) visualising the differences in body mass among these 2 different factor variables.
Use aov to perform an analysis of variance for each hypothesis. What do you conclude?

Hints

With boxplot, we used the formula syntax y ~ x (y is modelled by x). This also works with t.test!
Make sure you know which variety of test to do, and which hypothesis to test!
aov doesn’t produce very nice output by itself. Try saving the result of aov in a variable and using summary on that variable.

Comparing 2 histograms

Base graphics

Easiest just to do this in 2 panels. I set the axis limits so we have a fair comparison.

# create a multipanel figure, organised by rows, with 1 row and 2 colums
par(mfrow = c(1,2))
hist(subset(penguins_gentoo, sex == "female")$body_mass_g, 
     main = "Female Gentoo", col = 'pink', 
     border = NA, xlab = "Body Mass (g)", xlim = c(3800, 6500))
hist(subset(penguins_gentoo, sex == "male")$body_mass_g, 
     main = "Male Gentoo", col = 'lightblue', 
     border = NA, xlab = "Body Mass (g)", xlim = c(3800, 6500))

Comparing 2 histograms

GGplot

ggplot allows for fancier options

ggplot(penguins_gentoo, aes(x = body_mass_g, fill = sex)) + 
    geom_histogram(bins = 20, alpha = 0.8, position = "identity") + 
    theme_minimal() + xlab("Body Mass (g)") +
    scale_fill_manual("sex", values = c("pink", "lightblue"))

Running a t.test

Hypothesis: in Gentoo penguins, males are heavier than females
- Why alternative = "less"?
Conclusion?

t.test(body_mass_g ~ sex, data = penguins_gentoo, alternative = "less")

## 
##  Welch Two Sample t-test
## 
## data:  body_mass_g by sex
## t = -14.761, df = 116.64, p-value < 2.2e-16
## alternative hypothesis: true difference in means between group female and group male is less than 0
## 95 percent confidence interval:
##       -Inf -714.6651
## sample estimates:
## mean in group female   mean in group male 
##             4679.741             5484.836

Boxplot: distribution of a y-variable across categorical x-variables

library(RColorBrewer)
(cols = brewer.pal(3, "Paired"))#[c(1, 5, 7)])
## [1] "#A6CEE3" "#1F78B4" "#B2DF8A"


boxplot(body_mass_g ~ species+sex, data = penguins, 
        # at controls x-location, allows grouping by sex
        at = c(1.6,2,2.4,    3.6,4,4.4), 
        # set the colours, repeated twice (female and male)
        col = rep(cols, 2), 
        # axis label text size
        cex.axis = 0.8,
        # labels under the boxes
        names = c("", "Female", "", "", "Male", ""), 
        # set axis titles
        xlab = "", ylab = "Body mass (g)", 
        # disable the box around the plot
        bty = 'n', 
        notch = TRUE,
        # thinner boxes
        boxwex = 0.3 
)
# add a legend to the plot
legend("topleft", legend = unique(penguins$species), 
       title = "Species", fill = cols, bty = 'n')

Boxplots: useful for comparisons among multiple groups

ggplot(penguins, aes(y = body_mass_g, x = sex, 
                            fill = species)) + 
    geom_boxplot(notch = TRUE) + 
    theme_minimal() + ylab("Body Mass (g)") + xlab("") +
    scale_fill_brewer(palette = "Paired")

Violin plot: boxplot alternative that shows more information

# another option!
ggplot(penguins, aes(y = body_mass_g, x = sex, 
                            fill = species)) + 
    geom_violin() + 
    theme_minimal() + ylab("Body Mass (g)") + xlab("") +
    scale_fill_brewer(palette = "Paired")

Correlation

We can use the cor function to compute correlations among 2 or more variables
Compute a correlation matrix with the cor function using all 4 numeric variables.
Choose 2 variables to test for a significant correlation using cor.test
Use plot to produce a scatterplot of the 2 variables. Customize the plot to make it look a bit better

# If you use plot on a data frame, you can view multiple relationships at once
plot(penguins[, 3:6])

Correlation

We can use the cor function to compute correlations among 2 or more variables
Compute a correlation matrix with the cor function using all 4 numeric variables.

# I use round to make the printing nicer
round(cor(penguins[, 3:6]), digits = 3)
##                   bill_length_mm bill_depth_mm flipper_length_mm body_mass_g
## bill_length_mm             1.000        -0.229             0.653       0.589
## bill_depth_mm             -0.229         1.000            -0.578      -0.472
## flipper_length_mm          0.653        -0.578             1.000       0.873
## body_mass_g                0.589        -0.472             0.873       1.000

# If you use plot on a data frame, you can view multiple relationships at once
plot(penguins[, 3:6])

Correlation

We can use the cor function to compute correlations among 2 or more variables
Compute a correlation matrix with the cor function using all 4 numeric variables.
Choose 2 variables to test for a significant correlation using cor.test

# I chose the weakest correlation
cor(penguins$bill_depth_mm, penguins$bill_length_mm)
## [1] -0.2286256
cor.test(penguins$bill_depth_mm, penguins$bill_length_mm )
## 
##  Pearson's product-moment correlation
## 
## data:  penguins$bill_depth_mm and penguins$bill_length_mm
## t = -4.2726, df = 331, p-value = 2.528e-05
## alternative hypothesis: true correlation is not equal to 0
## 95 percent confidence interval:
##  -0.3280409 -0.1242017
## sample estimates:
##        cor 
## -0.2286256

# magic spell to give each species a different color
cols = factor(penguins$species) 
plot(penguins$bill_depth_mm, penguins$bill_length_mm,
     pch = 16, #dots instead of circles
     col = cols, xlab = "Bill depth (mm)", 
     ylab = "Bill length(mm)", bty = 'n'
)
legend("topleft", legend = levels(cols), fill = 1:3, bty = "n")

Linear models

We found a significant negative correlation between bill length and depth.
- Does this make sense?
- Our visualisation suggests something more is going on

Linear models

We found a significant negative correlation between bill length and depth.
- Does this make sense?
- Our visualisation suggests something more is going on
We can do regression and other kinds of linear models using the lm function
- Like aov, use the summary function to get a better look at the results
- the anova function can also be useful for models with categorical predictors
Try building a model that looks for the bill depth and bill length relationship, partitioned by species and sex

Linear models

Try building a model that looks for the bill depth and bill length relationship, partitioned by species and sex

mod_billdepth = lm(bill_depth_mm ~ bill_length_mm * species + bill_length_mm * sex, data = penguins)
summary(mod_billdepth)
## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = bill_depth_mm ~ bill_length_mm * species + bill_length_mm * 
##     sex, data = penguins)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -2.0740 -0.5208 -0.0642  0.4621  2.9887 
## 
## Coefficients:
##                                 Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept)                     16.25509    1.08618  14.965  < 2e-16 ***
## bill_length_mm                   0.03677    0.02854   1.289 0.198476    
## speciesChinstrap                -3.84651    1.93284  -1.990 0.047419 *  
## speciesGentoo                   -6.62661    1.75771  -3.770 0.000194 ***
## sexmale                          2.21069    0.91051   2.428 0.015726 *  
## bill_length_mm:speciesChinstrap  0.07512    0.04330   1.735 0.083688 .  
## bill_length_mm:speciesGentoo     0.06389    0.04068   1.571 0.117272    
## bill_length_mm:sexmale          -0.02183    0.02070  -1.054 0.292466    
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 0.8182 on 325 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.831,  Adjusted R-squared:  0.8274 
## F-statistic: 228.3 on 7 and 325 DF,  p-value: < 2.2e-16
anova(mod_billdepth)
## Analysis of Variance Table
## 
## Response: bill_depth_mm
##                         Df Sum Sq Mean Sq  F value Pr(>F)    
## bill_length_mm           1  67.30   67.30 100.5327 <2e-16 ***
## species                  2 920.55  460.27 687.6071 <2e-16 ***
## sex                      1  79.72   79.72 119.0908 <2e-16 ***
## bill_length_mm:species   2   1.60    0.80   1.1982 0.3031    
## bill_length_mm:sex       1   0.74    0.74   1.1118 0.2925    
## Residuals              325 217.55    0.67                    
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

Comparing proportions

Is the sex ratio for Gentoo penguins significantly different from 0.5?
Use the table function to view the counts
Try barplot for visualising
Use prop.test for the significance test

Comparing proportions

Is the sex ratio for Gentoo penguins significantly different from 0.5?
Use the table function to view the counts
Try barplot for visualising
Use prop.test for the significance test

# save it in a variable so we can use the counts later
tab = table(penguins_gentoo$sex)
tab
## 
## female   male 
##     58     61
prop.test(tab)
## 
##  1-sample proportions test with continuity correction
## 
## data:  tab, null probability 0.5
## X-squared = 0.033613, df = 1, p-value = 0.8545
## alternative hypothesis: true p is not equal to 0.5
## 95 percent confidence interval:
##  0.3953483 0.5802663
## sample estimates:
##        p 
## 0.487395

Tests of association: n × n Tables

Nesting holes of black-backed woodpeckers.

woodpecker = read.csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flee-group/vu_datenanalyse/main/datasets/woodpecker.csv")
head(woodpecker)
##   forest_type nest_tree
## 1      burned     birch
## 2      burned     birch
## 3      burned jack pine
## 4      burned     aspen
## 5      burned     birch
## 6      burned jack pine

table(woodpecker)
##            nest_tree
## forest_type aspen birch jack pine
##    burned       6    16         2
##    unburned    29    18        23

We want to test for an association between the two variables (forest type and nest tree)

$H_0$: Nesting tree is not associated with forest type

$H_A$: Nest tree is associated with forest type

Try chisq.test on these data.
Use barplot or geom_bar to visualise

Visualisation: Categorical Data

Barplots, or proportional bars for counts within categories

table(woodpecker)
##            nest_tree
## forest_type aspen birch jack pine
##    burned       6    16         2
##    unburned    29    18        23

woodp_plot = ggplot(woodpecker, aes(x = nest_tree,
                fill = forest_type))
woodp_plot = woodp_plot + geom_bar(width = 0.5, 
                    position=position_dodge())
woodp_plot = woodp_plot + xlab("Nest Tree Type") +
    theme_minimal() + labs(fill = "Forest Type")
woodp_plot

Side-by-side bars allow us to compare all categories on equal footing.

Introduction to R

Introduction to R

Setting up your workspace

Step 1

Step 2

Parts of Rstudio

Parts of Rstudio

Parts of Rstudio

Helpful vocabulary

Recommendations

Variables

Recommendations

Data types

Numeric operators

Functions

Data structures: vectors

Creating vectors

Vectorized operations

Vectors: indexing

More basic functions

More programming: logic and comparison

Logical operators

Reading in real data

Reading in real data

Data prep recommendations

Working with data frames

Working with data frames

Working with data frames

Working with data frames

Subsetting data frames

Logical subsets

Logical subsets

Logical subsets

Practise with data frames

Practise with data frames

Cleaning up the penguin data

Getting summary statistics

Getting summary statistics

Getting summary statistics

Summary statistics: practise

Summary statistics: practise

Summary statistics: practise

Summary statistics: practise

Graphics in R

Base graphics

ggplot2

Histograms: show the distribution of a single variable

Histograms: show the distribution of a single variable

Histograms: show the distribution of a single variable

Colours

Basic statistics: comparing means

Comparing means: more than 2 groups

Exercise: comparing means

Hypothesis 1: in Gentoo penguins, males are heavier than females

Hypotheses 2 & 3

Comparing 2 histograms

Comparing 2 histograms

Running a t.test

Boxplot: distribution of a y-variable across categorical x-variables

Boxplots: useful for comparisons among multiple groups

Violin plot: boxplot alternative that shows more information

Correlation

Correlation

Correlation

Linear models

Linear models

Linear models

Comparing proportions

Comparing proportions

Tests of association: n × n Tables

Nesting holes of black-backed woodpeckers.

Visualisation: Categorical Data